Poem for 3/10/22 - The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings. by Donika Kelly

 

The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings.

Donika Kelly

I am taken with the hot animal

of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs

and have them move as I intend, though

my knee, though my shoulder, though something

is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead

on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,

one with skin empty as a shell and hollow

feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,

I do not touch them. I imagine they

were startled to find themselves in the sun.

I imagine the tide simply went out

without them. I imagine they cannot

feel the black flies charting the raised hills

of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:

Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls

skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.

I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.

To the ditch lily I say I am in love.

To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow

street I am in love. To the roses, white

petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined

pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am

in love. I shout with the rough calculus

of walking. Just let me find my way back,

let me move like a tide come in.

Poem for 3/9/22 - Winter Morning by James Crewes

 Winter Morning

BY JAMES CREWS

When I can no longer say thank you

for this new day and the waking into it,

for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair

and the ticking of the space heater glowing

orange as it warms the floor near my feet,

I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again

by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me

and believes he deserves only safety

and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,

and watch the streetlights outside flashing

off one by one like old men blinking their

cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors

slamming car doors hard against the morning

and see the steaming coffee in their mugs

kissing chapped lips as they sip and

exhale each of their worries white into

the icy air around their faces—then I can

remember this one life is a gift each of us

was handed and told to open: Untie the bow

and tear off the paper, look inside

and be grateful for whatever you find

even if it is only the scent of a tangerine

that lingers on the fingers long after

you’ve finished peeling it.

Poem for 3/8/22 - Climate by Meghann Plunkett

 

Climate

Meghann Plunkett

It felt familiar, your mouth moving              up my side like a gale warning. My                          arm calico—mammatus clouds—             blood brought to the surface.  Now I understand my childhood             home. Releasing shingle after shingle                         into the brutal air. Our front door              torn and flat in the yard. Violent  gusts whipping through the marshes—             the back of your hand.                          Of what I have unlearned             this was the hardest.  One sandpiper singing  still, desire does not                          have to leave you             ruined.

Poem for 3/7/22 - Relentless Nostalgia by James Stone Goodman

 James Stone Goodman 

Relentless Nostalgia

I have no relentless nostalgia

For the Dniepr river and environs

My progenitors lived all around until

They were kicked out or left

The best decision they made for us

Their descendants was to flee the disease

Of hate that infected the entire

Area my antecedents known

By the place names

Where they taught

Berditchev Medzibozh Uman

Koretz Zhitomir Zhovka Belz my

Shtetele Belz became a sh**-hole

For my ancestors they had to leave

They threw Bubbe’s candlesticks and a few prayer books

Into a worn suitcase and scrammed

Myself and all who came after me

Thank them with every breath we take

Because they left

We live.

A hundred plus years later it took that long

For something fresh to rise in that cynical part

Of our planet and another diseased megalo-maniac

With plenty of help from other corruptors

Poised to prevent the opening of windows

Onto a suffocating closed box opening on light

Ancient darkness they have all the

Problems of a declining civilization

And all the attendant dangers of clashing

Messianisms there is someone to breathe life into a

Damaged culture so when you dream

Dream up and send them a good

Vibration to open up a new

Box of gems something

Free and beautiful

Give them what we can

We are one world

And it needs us

All in our little

And big ways.

Poem for 3/4 - “Celestial Music” by Louise Glück

 “Celestial Music” by Louise Glück

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.

Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.

She thinks someone listens in heaven.

On earth she's unusually competent.

Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.

I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality

But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.

Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out

According to nature. For my sake she intervened

Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down

Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains

My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who

Buries her head in the pillow

So as not to see, the child who tells herself

That light causes sadness-

My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me

To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking

On the same road, except it's winter now;

She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:

Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.

Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees

Like brides leaping to a great height-

Then I'm afraid for her; I see her

Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;

From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.

It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact

That we're at ease with death, with solitude.

My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.

She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image

Capable of life apart from her.

We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition

Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air

Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-

It's this stillness we both love.

The love of form is a love of endings.

• 1991

Poem for 3/3/22 - A Winter Beach on Cape Cod by Fred Ehrlich

 A Winter Beach on Cape Cod

by Fred Ehrlich

Sand, snow and ice are layered on the cliffs;

clouds and ocean lie on the horizon.

This was before the days of pixels

and our endless ability to record what is here.

I had taken a few photographs

when Emma, my granddaughter, grabbed the camera out of my hands

and began to snap.

I scolded, "Don't just photograph everything!"

Now, Emma has grown and I am old,

one of the photos she took is taped to the wall of my study.

It shows a girl in winter clothing running hard on the beach

just above the surf-line.

On the rare occasions that someone is interested in my collections

I tell them, "This is Emma's picture."

They do not know that Emma was the photographer, not the runner.

"Genius" is a word we apply to men and women

who produce a body of original work.

The "genius of childhood' makes us see

with the excitement of first discovery.

Emma and I are grateful to each other.

Poem for March 2, 2022 - The Sun, Mad Envious, Just Wants the Moon by Patricia Smith

 

The Sun, Mad Envious, Just Wants the Moon

Patricia Smith

out of the way. It knows that I tend to cling to potential in the dark, that I am myself only as I am beguiled by the moon’s lunatic luster, when the streets are so bare they grow voices. The sun has lost patience with my craving for the night’s mass-produced romance, that dog-eared story where every angle is exquisite, and ghostly suitors, their sleek smells exploding, queue up to ravish my waning. Bursting with bluster, the sun backslaps the moon to reveal me, splintered, kissing the boulevard face first, clutching change for a jukebox that long ago lost its hunger for quarters. It wounds the sun to know how utterly I have slipped its gilded clutch to become its most mapless lost cause. Her eye bulging, she besieges me with bright. So I remind her that everything dies. All the brilliant bitch can do for me then is spit light on the path while I search for a place to sleep. About This Poem “Wow—this is how you know the diva named ‘depression.’ How you dance with it to keep it at bay. Virus variants, blustering supremacists, a country’s collapsing democracy, a dying mother—all of it combines to bring me back to just me and what seeks to defeat me. But, hallelujah! Whatever my pen can name, my pen can defeat. So, you just recall the story; you rewind it, simply; you let it sit there and do its necessary work. I wrote this in darkness. I emerged from a little less darkness.” —Patricia Smith